Related papers: Configuration-Space Flipper Planning on 3D Terrain

Legged robot locomotion requires the planning of stable reference trajectories, especially while traversing uneven terrain. The proposed trajectory optimization framework is capable of generating dynamically stable base and footstep…

The paper proposes a reliable and robust planning solution to the long range robotic navigation problem in extremely cluttered environments. A two-layer planning architecture is proposed that leverages both the environment map and the…

Planetary exploration missions require robots capable of navigating extreme and unknown environments. While wheeled rovers have dominated past missions, their mobility is limited to traversable surfaces. Legged robots, especially…

Planning whole-body motions while taking into account the terrain conditions is a challenging problem for legged robots since the terrain model might produce many local minima. Our coupled planning method uses stochastic and…

We study the problem of motion-planning for free-flying multi-link robots and develop a sampling-based algorithm that is specifically tailored for the task. Our work is based on the simple observation that the set of configurations for…

Quadruped robots are machines intended for challenging and harsh environments. Despite the progress in locomotion strategy, safely recovering from unexpected falls or planned drops is still an open problem. It is further made more difficult…

To increase the speed of operation and reduce operator burden, humanoid robots must be able to function autonomously, even in complex, cluttered environments. For this to be possible, they must be able to quickly and efficiently compute…

With the development of robotics, ground robots are no longer limited to planar motion. Passive height variation due to complex terrain and active height control provided by special structures on robots require a more general navigation…

Under-actuated robot grippers as a pervasive tool of robots have become a considerable research focus. Despite their simplicity of mechanical design and control strategy, they suffer from poor versatility and weak adaptability, making…

This paper presents a framework for controlled emergency landing of a quadcopter, experiencing a rotor failure, away from sensitive areas. A complete mathematical model capturing the dynamics of the system is presented that takes the…

Hopping robots often lose balance on slopes because the tilted ground creates unwanted rotation at landing. This work analyzes that effect using a simple spring mass model and identifies how slope induced impulses destabilize the robot. To…

This paper presents a motion planning algorithm for quadruped locomotion based on density functions. We decompose the locomotion problem into a high-level density planner and a model predictive controller (MPC). Due to density functions…

Mobility on asteroids by multi-limbed climbing robots is expected to achieve our exploration goals in such challenging environments. We propose a mobility strategy to improve the locomotion safety of climbing robots in such harsh…

Following its success in natural language processing and computer vision, foundation models that are pre-trained on large-scale multi-task datasets have also shown great potential in robotics. However, most existing robot foundation models…

We consider the problem of reorienting a rigid object with arbitrary known shape on a table using a two-finger pinch gripper. Reorienting problem is challenging because of its non-smoothness and high dimensionality. In this work, we focus…

In this paper, we propose a single-actuator gripper that can lift thin objects lying on a flat surface, in addition to the ability as a standard parallel gripper. The key is a crawler on the fingertip, which is underactuated together with…

This paper presents a gripper capable of grasping and recognizing terrain shapes for mobile robots in extreme environments. Multi-limbed climbing robots with grippers are effective on rough terrains, such as cliffs and cave walls. However,…

Microspine grippers are small spines commonly found on insect legs that reinforce surface interaction by engaging with asperities to increase shear force and traction. An array of such microspines, when integrated into the limbs or…

This paper presents a fixturing strategy for regrasping that does not require a physical fixture. To regrasp an object in a gripper, a robot pushes the object against external contact/s in the environment such that the external contact…

Climbing robots face significant challenges when navigating unstructured environments, where reliable attachment to irregular surfaces is critical. We present a novel mobile climbing robot equipped with compliant pin-array structured…